Latino Daily News

Brazil’ Unemployment Rate Rises to 7.1 Percent With New Indicators

Brazil’s unemployment rate averaged 7.1 percent for all of 2013, the government said Thursday, which marked the debut of a new way of measuring joblessness.

The quarterly PNAD household survey is broader and more detailed than the previous indicator, the Monthly Employment Study, or PME, which found that unemployment in 2013 averaged 5.4 percent.

Joblessness in Brazil fell to 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to the PNAD, down 0.7 percent from the third quarter.

The employed population remained stable at 57.3 percent of the workforce, equating to 91.8 million people.

Between October and December, 77.1 percent of private-sector employees had formal contracts, an increase of 0.1 percent compared to the previous three-month period.

The PNAD and the PME, each compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, are both considered official for the time being, although the PME will no longer be published after December 2015.

The PNAD is compiled based on the recommendations of the International Labor Organization and employs household surveys in 3,500 of the country’s 5,500 municipalities, while the PME only gathers data from Brazil’s six largest cities.